


No Penance

by glycerineclown



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Blasphemy, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Matt finds out about Frank and Karen, Nuns, Plot spoilers for the end of The Defenders, and about What Karen Did
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 09:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13361532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glycerineclown/pseuds/glycerineclown
Summary: Karen hasn’t been inside a church since Matt’s funeral. It’s been nearly eight months, and now she’s standing outside the heavy wooden doors of a convent in Lower Manhattan. It’s probably weird that she brought Frank with her to see her ex who’s not dead.





	No Penance

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is in response to a tumblr prompt from @littlerosetrove: **Matt finds out about Frank and Karen’s relationship.**
> 
> There is no universe in which I can imagine Matt Murdock taking that news well, so this turned into a fic about Karen’s past. 
> 
> **Warnings:** Brief, non-specific references to child abuse by a family member, against Karen’s brother. There’s also discussion of deadly crimes and probably blasphemy. I’m not Catholic I just watch musicals and lightly google things!

Karen hasn’t been inside a church since Matt’s funeral. It’s been nearly eight months, and now she’s standing outside the heavy wooden doors of a convent in Lower Manhattan, because he’s not actually dead.

Foggy had called the night before, frantic and out of breath, to relay the news. Frank had listened in from her bed, his trigger finger marking his page on Karen’s worn copy of Charles Dickens’ _Great Expectations_.

Foggy had only been given a rough overview—Elektra pulled Matt from the pit below Midland Circle, and took him to the nuns for medical care. He’s been there ever since, slowly creeping back from being mostly dead. And sure, he was unconscious for some of that time, but the son of a bitch hadn’t even called Foggy to say he was alive until after he could walk again.

Karen heaves a sigh. She had made an appointment—Foggy had come in early that morning before a meeting with a client—and they’re few minutes ahead of schedule, but she’s nervous, wishes time would move slower. She has nothing prepared. Nothing really to say.

“You were raised Catholic, weren’t you?” Karen asks, turning to Frank.

He nods. “Skeeved me out then, and it still does.”

Frank’s arm slides around her waist, and she turns her body into him, rests her forehead against his temple and the hood of his sweatshirt.

“You ready?” he asks, his fingers squeezing her gently.

She’s not. She looks down at her phone to check the time instead of answering, shoves it in her coat pocket, and then wraps both her arms around Frank’s neck.

It’s probably weird that she brought Frank with her to see her ex who’s not dead.

“I love you so much,” she says, earnest, in his ear.

Frank chuckles. “I’m not worried about you an’ Red, Karen. But I love you too.”

Karen rubs her nose into his bearded cheek and pulls back. “It’s time.”

“Okay.”

A young nun in a royal blue habit greets them in the lobby. She introduces herself as Sister Agnes, and makes polite, hushed small talk as she leads them through the main hall and up three flights of stairs.  

She waits until they go through a door on the fourth floor and enter a sparse hallway to say anything about Matt.

“Mr. Murdock has been progressing quite well, all things considered. You’ve picked a good day to come. Our head nurse, Sister Margaret, says that he should be able to leave us in the next six weeks, but he’s had an infection that’s kept him back in bed. He’s a fighter, though.”

Karen can’t tell if she meant that as a double entendre or not.

There’s a bench against one wall, and Frank gestures to it as Sister Agnes stops in front of a door, and reaches for the knob.

“I’ll sit out here, let you have some time,” he says.

Karen nods, reaches into her bag, and pulls out _Great Expectations_. He smiles as he takes it from her, and sits down.

Matt would have recognized Frank’s voice just then, if he didn’t hear them from the sidewalk, and no doubt Frank knew it, too. Karen decides she doesn’t care—she asked him to come, after all. Moral support, or something.

The nun opens the door, and lets Karen enter first.

“Mr. Murdock, a Miss Karen Page is here to see you,” Sister Agnes says, and after Matt thanks her, she nods and takes her leave, closing the door behind her.

Matt’s sitting up in a twin bed, hooked to an IV. His skin is pale, blends right into the walls, but he’s on top of the sheets, like he could get up at any moment. He’s wearing sweats, and _not_ wearing his glasses.

“Hey, Karen,” he says, softly, and lifts a hand to wave.

She approaches the bed. There’s a chair pulled up next to it, and she sits in it, places her bag on the floor. “Hi.”

Matt sits up a little straighter. “I’m glad you came.”

Karen nods. “Foggy called me.”

“I figured he would. Wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me, though.”

She frowns. “We thought you were dead.”

“Well, a skyscraper and a billion tons of rock fell on top of me, so you had plenty o’ reason to think that.”

Karen looks down at her lap, clasps her hands together.

“I’ve been having the nuns read me your articles,” Matt says with a smile. “The Bulletin doesn’t offer a braille edition. I suspect that Sister Margaret told them to abridge some of the details, though.”

She smiles back. “I’ll ask Ellison if we can put in a special order for Daredevil.”

He chuckles at that, but he makes a face like it hurts to do so, so she doesn’t say anything else.

After a minute, Matt sighs, and looks up at her, nods toward the door. “Gonna tell me who’s outside, listening?”

Karen nods. “He goes by Pete these days.”

Matt cocks his head to the side. “But that’s not really his name.”

“Look, Matt, I didn’t come here to—I don’t want to fight.”

They’re going to, though.

“Then why did you bring him?” Matt says with a grimace. “How many knots do you have to tie yourself in to make being with him sound like a good choice? I know I’m one to talk after Elektra, but that’s—"

“Yeah, Matt, you _are_ one to talk,” she cuts in. “And you’ve been gone for a long time.”

“Not long enough for this to make sense. What the hell are you doing with that guy, Karen?” Matt says, somewhere between resigned and lip-curling. “And don’t bullshit me, I can fucking smell him on you.”

Matt’s being the condescending asshole she knew he’d be about this, and even though she knows his concern’s warranted, all his words serve to do is piss her off.

She shakes her head and scoffs, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I don’t know why I expected any different from you. You don’t even know me, Matt, not really.”

Matt scoffs back like he’s not a prick. “What are you talking about, of course I—”

“No, you know what I let you know,” she says through her teeth, leaning forward in her chair. “You know what reinforces your image of me. You wanna know who I am, Matt? You wanna know what I’ve done?”

He’s grasping the bedsheets in two fists. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t even matter, now that Frank’s made you an accessory.” He doesn’t want to know, but she’s gonna fucking tell him.

There’s a scrape outside in the hall, like a table leg on floorboards. Frank’s listening. Frank’s trying to say _be careful_ without bursting through the door. He knows she’s more than able to handle this herself, though. If he didn’t, he’d be in the room already.

It’s just another way he shows her respect.

Karen shakes her head, tucks some of her hair behind her ear. “My parents used to always worry about me, y’know, I developed earlier than they would have hoped, I guess, and they were always thinking about stranger danger, all that mid-nineties child predator bullshit. You remember.”

He nods. “Yeah.” Maybe he doesn’t, though.

Karen lowers her voice to a whisper. They’re alone in his room, but she looks around them anyway.

“My brother Kevin, you remember him?”

Matt shrugs. “Sure. Sort of. You didn’t say much.”

Karen nods. “Yeah, that’s because he’s dead. He crashed our dad’s Mercedes into a fence without a seat belt. The police didn’t know why, but I did. Our fucking parents did.”

She pauses then, takes a breath, but Matt waits instead of saying anything.

“They both worked a lot, and didn’t believe our uncle Martin was abusive, not to Kevin, they thought he was making it up,” Karen says. “They were talking seriously about putting him on medication. I’d never seen it happen, couldn’t be a witness, but I believed him.”

Karen drags one hand through her hair, and uncrosses her legs.

“Uncle Martin showed up to the goddamn funeral, and I couldn’t even cry, I was so angry—” Karen huffs, and looks down. “I went into the attic when I got home, and found our dad’s gun. The next day I went over to Uncle Martin’s house, and shot him dead with it.”

Matt’s face is softer, now. “How old were you?”

“Just turned fifteen. My parents told the cops I had been at home all day, and barely spoke to me after that. They got divorced after I finished high school, and my dad said he’d pay for college if I stayed away for good, so I did.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Karen looks up at the ceiling, and then back at Matt. “Because as sad as I was, it was a _relief_ when you were gone. I didn’t have to worry about your judgment anymore, and I’m not ever going to worry about it again.”

Matt closes his eyes, hangs his head. “Karen,” he says, but then he stops.

She waits in silence, and finally, she sighs. “Didn’t you ever wonder why James Wesley disappeared off the face of the earth?”

Matt makes a face. “I assumed that he fled, after Fisk got arrested.”

She shakes her head, minutely, even though Matt can’t see her. “He waited outside my building and kidnapped me, after he figured out that I went to see Marlene Vistain.”

“He _kidnapped_ you?”

Karen nods. “And left a loaded gun on the table between us when he answered his phone.”

Matt’s brow furrows. “You thought I would judge you for self-defense?”

Karen raises hers. “I know you would, Matt—you believe in the law, _proven_ guilty. You don’t even kill rapists, you just saddle ‘em with fifty or sixty grand in medical bills.”

“But Karen, you just described two _very_ different situations.”

“Why, because I could have proved the abuse in court by myself _after_ my brother was dead anyway? They weren’t different to me. Not really, not at the time. Wesley was threatening Ben, and Foggy, and you—I was protecting them.”

“And Frank, I suppose, is totally supportive,” he says, too loudly.

“At least I can be honest with Frank without him throwing a self-righteous _tantrum_ ,” Karen hisses back.

Matt laughs. “That’s great, Karen. You know, you really don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be. It’s not like I invited you. I didn’t ask you to tell me all this, and I’m sorry that keeping it from me was such a _burden_ to you.”

“Well, I just wanted to see that you were actually alive, and not a meat pancake.”

The door opens behind them, and Frank clears his throat when Karen turns to look.

Frank closes the door behind him. “What’s up, altar boy,” he says, grabbing another chair from against the wall. He places Karen’s book on a side table, and swings the chair around to sit backwards in it, a couple of feet from her.

“Pete,” Matt says, like the word feels funny in his mouth.

“Castiglione,” Frank says. “My ma was Italian.” He looks around the room. “Where’s Elektra?”

“I haven’t seen her in a few weeks,” Matt says. “She got restless, and didn’t like the sisters. Well—they didn’t much care for her, either.”

“Maybe it was something else she didn’t like, huh,” Frank says, with a crooked grin.

Karen presses her lips together to keep from laughing.

God, she loves him.

 

“Well, that didn’t go very well,” Karen says, when they step out onto the sidewalk.

Frank snorts. “To tell you the truth, I’m surprised you didn’t get us kicked out for causing _Mr. Murdock_ undue stress.”

“Yeah, I kept expecting Sister Agnes to come bursting in to yell at me for cussing.”

She tucks her hand into Frank’s elbow. They’d taken the F train in from Brooklyn, and start toward the station without discussing it.

“You sure that was the right move?” he asks, nodding behind them. “Telling him?”

Karen shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. I don’t really care, though,” she says lightly, with a small smile. “Maybe that’s fucked up.”

Frank shakes his head at her. “You got some brass balls, Karen, I’ll tell you that. Confessin’ to the Devil in a goddamn convent.”

She rolls her eyes, and lets go of his arm to pull out her phone. “I’ve gotta be at work at one.”

“Yeah, I bet you do,” he says with a grin, and turns to walk backward in front of her. “Let a guy buy ya lunch first? I know a great dive.”

Karen scoffs at him, smiling. “You really know how to make a girl feel special.”

Frank makes a face back. “Hasn’t steered me wrong so far.”

He’s right, and she hates how right he is.

“Fine,” Karen says, like it’s a cross to bear. “I want a cheeseburger.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com), as always. This fic is rebloggable [here](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com/post/169661657803/no-penance-frank-castlekaren-page-matt-murdock), if you're so inclined!


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